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With Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Belle and Sebastian take a pointed step towards having noticeable bass and drum layers, although sadly it is not a big one: the pair of black platform shoes this wispy, pastel-coloured band has put on is not quite enough to quell the sense that the music is floating away.

Opening track “Nobody’s Empire” exemplifies this perfectly: its driving bass drum beat is emotive, but simultaneously disappointing for how rousing it could be with just a slight shift in mixing (I’ve tried boosting the bass on my end, to little avail).

The album at large (not for the first time in B&S’s discography) makes some poetic and important statements about mental illness, for example in “Play for Today”:

She’s got a friendAn ugly monster that will eat your faceShe hides a crimeA hefty catalog of wasted timeShe’s got a friendA lonely monster that will prey on you

Yet it is “Allie” that more potently encapsulates undercurrents in Belle and Sebastian that make me uneasy with this album as a whole:

When there’s bombs in the middle east, you want to hurt yourselfWhen there’s knives in the city streets, you want to end yourselfWhen there’s fun in your mother’s house, you want to cry yourself to sleep

This channeling of vague (or at least vaguely-communicated) awareness of others’ unknown hardships back into one’s own, more privileged, pain, is similarly reflected in the decision to feature visual references to armed conflict in the album’s cover art.

Frankly, I’m getting tired of white indie bands (from white-led countries, no less) appropriating experiences that are not their own to add edge to their self-expression or flair to a love song.

For these reasons I won’t stand behind Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance as one of this year’s great indie albums, even if it does have some captivating tracks.